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Saint Callan
Saint Callan is a minor Dulnic Saint known by many epithets, most notably He Who Spoke With the Voice of Dargarius, He that Dreamt, and 'The Quill in the Hand of Dargarius. '''He is a patron of hermits, prophets, educators, and the left-handed. Callan was a young, illiterate soldier who was captured in battle and tortured with fire and hot tallow, his ordeal culminating with his right hand (the blade hand) being burned off. Crippled and disfigured, he was then cast into prison and left to die of his injuries. Callan, having given himself over to despair, was visited in a dream by an apparition of Saint Dargarius, who declared that, if he should take up a quill, he should do more against his enemies than he ever could with a sword. Callan, it is said, awoke able to see the shapes of letters in his burn scars and scratched his own name into the stone wall of his cell. In the next night's dream, Dargarius declared that what was next to be done was to acquire the materials of a scribe. Callan asked how such things could be acquired; the saint responded that all he must do was have faith. In the morning, Callan begged his jailer for a candle, a flint to light it with, ink, a quill, and parchment. To his astonishment, the voice that left his mouth was only partially his own, and that the strength and weight of the voice of Dargarius lay behind his words. Rather than whip the prisoner for his boldness, the stunned jailer acquired all that Callan had requested. As Callan slept on the third night, Dargarius appeared to him once more and declared that the work of a scribe was now his to begin. Callan asked how he was to perform the task if his main hand had been severed, with the Saint responding once more that he should have faith. On awakening, Callan found that the use of his left hand came as naturally as the use of his right once had. Callan spent several years writing words of great insight, gifted with holy inspiration by Saint Dargarius. His injuries still continued to bring him pain, but it was far more bearable for his work. He taught the jailer who brought him supplies how to read and write, and with the jailer came many more servants of his enemies, all coming in secret to Callan's cell to be educated. Soon, the poor from all over the city came to receive lessons and wisdom from the crippled scribe. All the while, Callan had great dialogues with Saint Dargarius in his dreams. Soon, artists and madmen also made a kind of pilgrimage; Callan soothed their troubled minds with his words and passed on the holy inspiration of his patron. When his captors discovered this, an immediate ban was placed on the lessons, but his most devout pupils continued to spread his teachings. When his scribes' supplies were taken away, Callan continued to scratch his insights on the stone wall as he had once done with his name. His captors tried every punishment to make him cease his work, but however long they starved him and denied him water, he remained unaffected, and the whip-stings and bruises from his beatings healed with miraculous speed. Eventually, he was dragged from his cell and brought back to the torture chamber from years before. His torturers were shocked to find that the tallow burns dripped onto Callan's bare back assembled into words, a warning from Dargarius. The authorities of the land dismissed this claim and superstition and condemned Callan to death. He was bound in chains and suspended from the outer wall, left to die of exposure. Callan, trusting in Dargarius, gave rousing speeches about the injustice suffered by the people, inciting them to rebel. Hoping to stop these speeches, his captors sliced off his tongue from between his lips, but it had regrown by the next day. He continued to speak out until his students incited a successful rebellion, at which point he died in ecstasy. Callan's story features prominently in the poet Andrema's ''Dargariad. Several scrolls purported to be Callan's originals exist both in the Great Skell of Inne Ve and the Davar Ia Nadha of Sriad.